


reeling through the midnight streets

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21673795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Before Ronan Lynch had met Adam Parrish, he had thought he would have had to deal with the unfortunate circumstance of being in love with Richard Gansey III.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch
Comments: 14
Kudos: 103





	reeling through the midnight streets

Before Ronan Lynch had met Adam Parrish, he had thought he would have had to deal with the unfortunate circumstance of being in love with Richard Gansey III.

Gansey was this: golden, beautiful, kind, unnerving.

Ronan was this: sixteen and unsure of what to do with his hands when the other was around.

Ronan watched him write in his journal at Monmouth, watched him paste meticulously cut squares of paper from newspapers into certain pages. Ronan watched him adjust his glasses in a specific way late at night that left them eternally crooked. Ronan went to sleep at night, and dreamt and dreamt and dreamt so much about Gansey that he could hardly tell the difference between waking reality and its opposite when dawn broke. Had Ronan really driven Gansey’s Camaro, Gansey in the shotgun, moon everywhere else? Had Ronan really drunk all of his orange juice, or was that only a dream? Had Ronan really-

Well.

“It’s hard for me, I guess,” confessed Gansey after they had watched Singin’ in the Rain. Gansey liked films that you would find on Google searches phrased like _Best Movies of All Time_ or _Films Your Grandfather Will Tell You Are Incredible._ Ronan liked them because Gansey liked them. He would never say so to anyone.

“What is,” grunted Ronan, mouth full of chips. All the lights were off in his house and you could hear the VHS player whirring beneath the sounds of delicate rain on the windowpanes.

“Getting very close to people.” Gansey’s voice was thoughtful. He turned to Ronan almost too earnestly. “I mean, I find people very interesting. But I often feel like, I don’t know. Like no one truly understands me.” He tilted his head slightly, blinking, then gave a sheepish grin. “Wow, I’m such a teenager, aren’t I? What I’m saying is that I feel like I know you. And that you know me.”

Ronan stared at him. “Yeah.”

Ronan understood. Gansey knew that he understood.

Ronan was blushing, but Gansey couldn’t have seen because all the lights were off in his house and the VHS player made a clicking sound that meant the tape had reached its end.

-

There were days when it all blurred together. The both of them, the both of their houses. That summer before junior year, it was beautiful.

Gansey jiggled his hand with a beer can in it at Ronan, snorting. When Gansey had first appeared before Ronan, Ronan had been sure he would never see any of these two factors coinciding with Gansey. But here they were. And there was the sun, above them.

It was beautiful.

“Ronan, Ronan, Ronan. Lynch. Ronan Lynch.” Gansey syncopated the words into a mockery of a song.

Ronan bared his teeth at him. “What.”

“This beer smells like pee.” Gansey laid his head onto Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan was aware of his bones and Gansey’s skin. He was made of antlers; Gansey of antler velvet.

“It tends to do that.” Ronan leaned back, displacing Gansey’s skull as he splayed his arms out into the grass. They were in a field near the Barns. Gansey had brought Ronan along to catalog plants nearby. _This is Pennsylvania Sedge, this is Buttonbush. This is- ah. What is this?_ He had found a plant that Niall had presumably dreamed up before Ronan’s memories had begun. It had invaded the neighboring ecosystems, bright and only jarring enough to make even the most casual plant-lover wonder if it belonged there.

Ronan wanted to tell Gansey about his dreams. He couldn’t. He thought about this, lying in _Danthonia spicata._

Gansey looked up at him through his eyelashes. His breeding had led to a jawline out of GQ Magazine. Ronan thought it extremely frustrating.

Gansey adjusted himself next to him. They listened to the insects gossip about the weather. Ronan hummed a song under his breath and Gansey joined in, terribly off-key because he didn’t actually know what song they were humming.

“Ronan.” Gansey’s voice was made of honey. Ronan rolled over to face him and found his face being caressed by a hand with fingertips clipped to perfection.

Ronan didn’t speak because his voice would have been too small. Gansey had leaned down and placed a kiss on his neck. Ronan realized, then, that this was a dream.

It was all off, anyway. The beer had come from nowhere. The dirt on the ground hadn’t scraped his neck in the way it would have.

Ronan couldn’t tell Gansey about his dreams, in one part because his father and his brother had said not to and in another because the worst ones involved Gansey’s mouth.

 _It was all off, anyway,_ Ronan thought, watching himself from above. He had brought back bees. The kind that wouldn’t sting. Or maybe they would. He never knew much about the consequences of his dreams until he was awake again.

-

Gansey said nothing. Ronan narrowed his eyes at him.

“Did it hurt?” he asked, finally. He kept staring at Ronan’s neck, where the ends of his tattoo ended in sharp curls.

“Yeah, Gansey.” Ronan wanted to be cruel. He wanted to bury himself in something like hatred forever. It would be great, perfect. There was so much space between them, from Ronan to the bathroom where Gansey kept his fridge. Their fridge, now. The door was open, the fluorescent beam of it giving Gansey a halo.

Gansey stepped towards him, Ronan’s nerves a live wire. Tick, tick, tick. His heart was a bomb. Ronan was a bomb. Gansey was an American dream.

Gansey reached out and touched his shoulder in what he most likely thought was a reassuring gesture. “Don’t,” Ronan said, striding into his bedroom and slamming the door.

He could imagine Gansey with the lamp turned on. Old sweater. Making a funny face in reaction to dropping his tiny sewing scissors he used instead of normal ones. Mumbling to himself in annoyance or glee at whatever he had learned. All alone. No one to hear him.

Ronan knew what he would dream about, that night, and went to sleep anyway. He thought it must be masochism.

The worst thing about his dreams, now, was that they were mostly the same as they previously were until the very end. The worst thing about the nicer of his dreams was that they were about the _before._ The Ronan _before_ the one who had become an orphan. The Ronan _before_ the one who could not go back to the Barns. There were two of him and the newest version was simply stuck trying to go back to the other. There were no roads to that place. (Or perhaps there were, and they only existed in dreams.) It made so much sense that he felt pathetic.

The dream Gansey said, “Lynch,” and Ronan found his attention caught on Gansey’s collarbone, visible for the smallest fraction before snaking its way under his Aglionby uniform. They were in their history classroom. No, the courtyard. No, the-

“Dick Three,” said Ronan warily, amusedly. “Come to associate with the rabble?”

Gansey gave him a strained smile. Gave it to him. It was a gift, even when pained. Ronan laughed at him good-naturedly as he sat down next to him. He hoped he looked cool, his tie undone and everything, but you know, whatever.

“You look tired.” Ronan was being conversational. He was never conversational.

“Yes, well. Studying. Burning the candle at both ends. That’s me.” Gansey didn’t actually roll his eyes, but.

“Richard Gansey is a genius, God, we get it,” Ronan said, fishing through his backpack for a Snickers bar he swore he left in there.

Gansey examined him. “And Ronan Lynch is what?”

“Huh?” said Ronan, his chewing overpowering any other sounds.

“What is Ronan Lynch? Who are you?” A teasing tone, perhaps.

Ronan didn’t lie. “A dreamer,” he said, and flashed Gansey a grin.

“Ah,” smiled Gansey, and that was that. Ronan woke up without anything in his hands. He did, however, have a hard-on. He cursed as he got out of bed and he cursed as he brushed his teeth. Gansey simply set a bagel onto a plate and slid it towards him.

-

“Have you ever dated anyone?” Gansey’s hand was itching at his stomach, exposing a landscape of skin that was usually left unseen, and Ronan was watching it all hungrily.

“What are we, fourteen?”

“I think we’re a bit young to start talking like we’re old and wise in comparison.”

“Ooh, big words, you’re so smart.” Ronan went high pitched to make fun of him.

“No, but really.”

“No, Gansey, I fucking haven’t.” Ronan laughed in his face. Gansey wiped off a drop of spit from the ordeal, unamused. Ronan’s smile faltered for a moment. “Have you?”

“Not really.” Gansey blew out some air. “I’ve kissed a few girls, but I suppose I’ve never been in love, or had a long-term relationship.”

“You kissed a few girls? Really? Who the fuck?” Ronan laughed again at him, checking for hurt and finding more curiosity than anything else as Gansey threw a sock at him.

Ronan almost thought Gansey had fallen asleep when he piped up again: “I wonder what it’s like, sometimes.”

Ronan smirked at him. “To fuck?”

“No, to be in love!” Gansey protested, flustered.

Ronan decided not to be cruel. “Me too, Gansey.” He didn’t know how he felt.

In the memory, they both went to sleep and Ronan watched the rise and fall of Gansey’s chest from the other side of the rug on his bedroom floor at the Barns. In the dream, they are anywhere, everywhere, and Gansey kisses him just for the hell of it and then because he wants to.

Gansey rarely does anything just for the hell of it, so it doesn’t make sense, and Ronan wakes up because he knows this and he wakes up with more bees or flowers or something even more mortifyingly embarrassing, like an Epipen.

-

“Sometimes,” Ronan said over his Lucky Charms, “I wish you would just be mean to me.”

Gansey simply looked and looked and looked at him and then pushed the milk in his direction.

(In the dream, Gansey says _Let me see_ and Ronan takes off his shirt and shows him his tattoo. In the memory it’s like that but Gansey does not slide his fingertips farther down than the end of his spine.)

-

“You can talk to me, you know that, right?” Gansey stumbled on. He was furious. He was seething. Ronan was alert because this was the type of Gansey he knew he was responsible for creating.

“It’s not your fucking fault. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, you just want to go out into the night and play Fast and the Furious with Joseph Kavinsky. There are better ways to mourn, Ronan.”

“Don’t you fucking talk to me about mourning.” Ronan moved to leave the kitchen but Gansey grabbed his wrist. Ronan looked at their hands, that close together, and felt betrayed.

“What do you _need,_ ” Gansey said, urgently, tugging at him like he used to that summer, when they’d weave in between trees to find a hiking trail he found online. When he’d get tipsy on their stolen beer and sit on a tree stump and pull at Ronan’s sleeve and tell him, _It’s all right, sit on my lap, there’s plenty of room._

Ronan, angrily, took Gansey’s hand and pressed it to where a bulge had begun to form beneath his pants. He watched Gansey’s eyes widen with a sick satisfaction until it didn’t feel good anymore.

“Nothing you can give me,” he hissed, stomping into his room without a backwards glance.

-

Niall had liked Gansey, when Ronan had first introduced him. Ronan had noticed Gansey mentally labelling every item at the Barns, every feeling. He looked at it through his eyes: the low ceilings, the warm lighting. The lived-in quality of every item; the couch was worn and fading, but still charming, somehow; the kitchen counters covered in spices and herbs in jars, many expired but many with made-up names written in Sharpie on their paper labels; the laughter of Matthew down the hall and the low chuckle of Declan in reply, surprising but heartwarming. If you knew Niall was a dreamer, you would be able to connect the dots and realize that he dreamed of his home, all the time.

Ronan didn’t know what he wanted to dream of, exactly.

“You’re welcome here anytime,” said Niall, his tone a sweeping gesture of new money and overconfidence. He gave Ronan a wink that Ronan figured either meant that he was proud he had brought someone as impressive as Richard Campbell Gansey III into his house or that he _knew._ Ronan couldn’t decide which he secretly felt more smug about.

“Show me your bedroom,” said Gansey brightly after he was done scrutinizing their family photos. _I like this one,_ he had mused, pointing at a baby version of Ronan and his brothers taking a bath. It was so domestic that Ronan had fake-gagged to make Gansey laugh at it instead of see him vulnerable.

“Sure,” Ronan said easily. He searched for an innuendo to make but couldn’t find a good one in time. He was sixteen and he rarely brought friends home. He knew Niall and Aurora were observing them, listening to their exchanges from the living room.

Gansey was delighted to go through Ronan’s things for a while, Ronan kicking at the floor as he sat on the edge of his bed. He caught himself smiling at Gansey’s back and let himself do it. “Is this your diary?” Gansey wiggled a hardcover journal at Ronan.

“Hoping to find out who my crush is or something?” Ronan sneered at him amiably. “There’s nothing written in there.”

“How boring.” Gansey sifted through the layers of old paper in Ronan’s dresser. “You draw?”

“Yeah,” said Ronan, gazing out his window, eyes catching on a bug buzzing, trying to get in.

“These are so cool,” Gansey said. Ronan snorted at his lapse of vocabulary. “I love this one! Ballpoint pen?” He held up a drawing of a tree Ronan had done last year.

“The superior medium,” Ronan agreed, pleased.

“You should draw me!” Gansey cheerfully whipped his head around to give him the look of a child on Christmas. Ronan couldn’t even be annoyed at the request.

“Sure, Dicky,” Ronan said. “I’ll draw you.” He didn’t even like doing portraits.

-

“You never drew me.”

It was one of the easier nights. Gansey had given up on his model of Henrietta, school was starting in a week and a half, and Ronan had plopped onto his bed back-first, congenial.

“Ha, okay dude. I’ll draw you right now.” Ronan went to run a hand through his hair and then remembered he had shaved it all off. He hoisted himself up in one swift motion and gathered up some materials from his room, clicking different pens until he found the one he had dreamed up during the summer. When he came back, Gansey was sitting on his desk chair, posed with his posture rigid.

“How’s this?”

“You look ugly,” said Ronan automatically, tired, smiling. Gansey chortled. “Okay, okay, stay still. I never draw people so this might turn out fucking horrendous.”

“I’m certain I’ll love it anyway.” Gansey gave him a million-watt grin.

Ronan rolled his eyes at him. “Thanks, Dad.” He could sense rather than hear Gansey’s annoyance.

He scratched at the paper for half an hour before stopping. Gansey stared at the wall, thoughtful, almost sad. Ronan hadn’t been sure what the dreamed-up pen would do but now he realized that the drawing had an almost lifelike quality to it, despite the jawline being slightly off and the shoulder too darkly shaded. He looked at it and felt, _Gansey._ He pressed his lips into an irritated line as he stood up and ripped it out of his sketchbook, placing the drawing atop Gansey’s head. “Here you go, dumbass. I should have made a joke about that one fucking Titanic quote earlier but I just thought of it now so it’s all ruined.”

Gansey turned the paper this way and that. “Lovely, Ronan.” He held it up millimeters from his eyeballs. “You have such a nice line quality.” Ronan turned away so he wouldn’t see the tips of his ears, which were inevitably red.

“Thank you,” Gansey said, too sincerely, looking up at him. His hair had a habit of letting just one of its locks fall onto his forehead so that he looked like an extra from Grease.

“You’re welcome,” replied Ronan, too earnestly, and then he stormed out to sit in his car to let his heart rate calm down, to let his hands stop grasping for something he didn’t- he couldn’t-

-

_Glendower,_ Gansey had said, and Ronan had humored him until he had begun to believe it. Gansey was the sort of person you wanted to exist alongside magic. He was unexplainable otherwise.

And what reasons did Ronan have to doubt it, anyway? His home was made of dreams.

“Ley lines,” Ronan repeated. Gansey nodded eagerly.

-

“Let me drive the Pig,” Ronan asked, _pleaded_.

Gansey eyed him. “No.”

“C’mon, Dick. I know how to drive. I won’t fuck it up.”

“You should know better than to use that nickname when you’re trying to convince me, my friend.”

“Then I’ll fucking ride shotgun. Let’s go somewhere.” Ronan’s knee was bouncing up and down.

Gansey considered this. “Yeah, all right.”

They sat in the car. Ronan openly watched Gansey turn the key, wrap his hand around the stick shift. Gansey kept his expression impassive.

“Are we going to talk about the other night?”

Ronan let out an ugly laugh. “Oh, that."

“Okay, so no, then.” Gansey turned his blinker on.

-

Gansey slept in the middle of Monmouth. No walls. No real bedroom. He slept with his thoughts left all over the place, left them out in the open, he trusted Ronan that much. Didn’t bother cleaning up his glue sticks or his scraps of paper until morning. People always quipped about the downsides of living with roommates, but Ronan didn’t mind the mess, didn’t mind their laundry getting mixed up, didn’t mind, didn’t mind.

It was very late one night, and he heard Gansey touch himself.

In the dream, Ronan leaned over him and said, _You want some help, Ganseyboy?_

In the memory, Ronan had gone to get some water from the tap and stopped completely, kept his breathing low, and listened.

-

Gansey had pulled over to the side of the road. He was so angry. Ronan had made him so angry.

“Your father wouldn’t want you to skip school,” Gansey spit, stepping out into the night.

“You’re not my fucking father, though,” snarled Ronan, hurling the door of the Pig closed, knowing it would hurt Gansey to see his car handled like that. Gansey did glower at him pointedly.

“I’m with you forever, you understand? _Forever,_ Ronan, until the end. I don’t want-“ Gansey rubbed his face with his hand with a sort of violence- “I don’t know.” He moved towards Ronan, cornering him against the car. Ronan’s chest rose and fell visibly. “I can…” Gansey trailed off, breath fluttering over Ronan’s neck, now; he was nervous, they were both terrified, Gansey’s hand was brushing up against Ronan’s thigh-

“I don’t want your fucking pity, Gansey. Fuck,” muttered Ronan, getting back into the car, ridiculously. “Fuck,” he said again, nonsensical, yelling, shutting himself in and leaving Gansey outside with the sliver of moon and the crickets. _Hello_ , said the wilderness on the other side of the road. _You are alone in this._

Gansey got in the driver’s seat. It was so dark. They sat in silence. Gansey fiddled with the radio and then turned it off; it was only static. Ronan started to say, “Can we leave,” just as Gansey said, “It wouldn’t be pity.”

Ronan clenched his fist, unclenched it. “Please. Oh, fucking damn it- please, Gansey. Like you’ve ever even thought about me that way. Like that wouldn’t ruin us forever to try.”

“Who says I haven’t?” said Gansey, comically defensive, ignoring the latter part.

Ronan huffed bitterly, wringing his hands. He leaned over, sharp, all edges, ghosting an exhale over Gansey’s cheek as he kept his voice low and said, “So you’re telling me that the other night, when you were jacking off, you thought about _this._ ” He punctuated the word with a squeeze of Gansey’s thigh.

He heard Gansey’s breath hitch. He didn’t answer, and for a moment Ronan thought, _What have I been doing. What have I done. I have hurt us both. I have left it all behind for my dreams to take instead-_

But Gansey mumbled, “Ronan,” and pulled Ronan down for a kiss. The sun came right out of him. It was nighttime no longer.

“Jesus,” said Gansey when they came up for air. His voice was the same as it was the time Ronan had shown him how to fight.

“They call me by many different names, yeah,” Ronan said, lit up, and Gansey seemed to want to slap him but refrained from doing so.

-

“Ronan?” Gansey said kindly through the doorway, when the Camaro had been parked with care outside the door and the keys had been thrown onto the piles of paper on his desk. Ronan had taken a shower and laid down in his bed to plug in his headphones. He took one out of one ear, raising an eyebrow. Monmouth was asleep, but its drowsiness seemed to lack a contagious quality.

“Will you show me your tattoo?” Gansey had put on his glasses. Ronan shuddered slightly, sitting up. _A dream_ , he thought. _Time to wake up_.

“You need to work on your pick-up lines, Richard,” he said, tone gravelly. The bed bounced as he took off his shirt. Gansey had made his way over to sit next to him.

“I don’t know,” mumbled Gansey. “It seems like they’re working.” He traced a feather over Ronan’s lower back and Ronan could feel a whine forming in his throat, barely there.

“Fuck, Gansey,” whispered Ronan as Gansey’s lips traced over his neck. “You said you’d never done this before.”

“I suppose it comes natural with you,” Gansey replied, mouth moving against skin, half joking but obviously pleased. Ronan craned his head back to kiss him fervidly. He ran his tongue over Gansey’s teeth, forgot where he was. Gansey groaned a little, pulling them closer together. They kept going and going, Gansey’s hands pressed against different parts of Ronan’s torso, and it was a long time before Ronan thought of anything else.

“Tell me how you like it,” Gansey said lowly, sucking at Ronan’s jaw. Ronan supposed this was how it would be, Gansey asking him but not really asking, Ronan unsure of what to give in return. Gansey was tracing circles onto Ronan’s hips. “Tell me how you do it.”

Ronan was a man of action and not words, mostly, so he grabbed Gansey’s hand and placed it over his cock through his briefs. _Anything. Any way._

Gansey gave a small gasp, then wrapped his hand around Ronan. Ronan understood now, why his classmates wouldn’t shut the fuck up about sex. Someone else’s hand on you was extremely different than your own at four in the morning. Gansey seemed as excited as Ronan was, which seemed impossible, because Ronan was squirming and moaning and losing his sense of self. “Yeah,” Gansey breathed into his ear, maybe to himself. He rubbed Ronan’s cock gingerly, licking his lips. Ronan could hear every movement he made. Gansey took his other hand and ran it down Ronan’s jaw absentmindedly.

“Could you-“ Ronan flushed- “could you maybe- your hands-“ Gansey looked at him from the side curiously, pupils dilated, and pressed the ends of his fingers against Ronan’s bottom lip. Ronan sighed in a way he hadn’t heard himself before. Gansey slid his fingers in, his other hand leisurely stroking at his dick. Ronan slid his tongue around them almost instinctively. Gansey’s face, somehow, had an edge of smugness to it.

Gansey slowly slid his hand underneath Ronan’s briefs, drawing it out. The thing about Gansey was that he liked to know things. He was very proud of knowing things. Right now, he knew what Ronan wanted.

Gansey rubbed the tip of Ronan’s cock, he glided his palm over the rest of it with a tenderness Ronan couldn’t comprehend. He pressed his fingernail against Ronan’s slit, wringing a moan out of Ronan.

“I’d always thought you’d be loud.” Gansey was quiet and thoughtful. He was almost cordial as he took his fingers out of Ronan’s mouth and brought them down to fondle his balls. Ronan vaguely realized he felt Gansey’s dick behind him, hard and _there._ “You probably always wait until I’m gone to, well,” he seemed embarrassed, “you know.” Ronan was hopelessly turned on.

Gansey continued conversationally, “Do you like this? I guess some people don’t.” His right hand was pressing against Ronan’s balls.

“I do,” babbled Ronan, almost drooling. “Don’t fucking stop.”

Gansey looked at him appreciatively, rubbing Ronan’s precome over the rest of his cock. Ronan bucked his hips into it and felt Gansey’s dick twitch against his ass. “Do you want,” he grit out. Gansey peered at him, cheeks red.

Nervously, Gansey took his hand out. “Should we, um.” He made a gesture with his hands, incomprehensible. He laughed a little, unsettled. “If that’s all right.”

Ronan didn’t know what he meant. “Whatever you want, Gansey. God. Of course it’s all right. Fuck.” He got out of his boxers.

Gansey flusteredly took off his pants and underwear and arranged himself over Ronan, pushing him down on the mattress. Ronan stared at his dick, bare and hard and exactly what you’d expect from Gansey. _Oh._ “Please tell me if you’re not comfortable.” He had gotten polite, which meant he was feeling timid.

“Go on,” Ronan said urgently, the presence of Gansey’s hands on either side of his head making him delirious. Gansey took both of their dicks in his hand and slid them together. Small moans burst out of each of them and Ronan lost the willpower to be self-conscious.

“We could,” Gansey said between breaths, “have sex, um, but we don’t have any lube, or protection, I’m not sure-“

“This is perfect,” Ronan cut him off. Gansey’s hands were back next to his neck and they were both slowly moving against each other. He was not the Ronan from before, he was something else. It felt, for once, like something exciting to know he had to figure out what he had become.

Gansey nodded slightly and sped up his movements, seemingly checking for Ronan’s reaction each time he did anything different. Ronan looked at his arms, at the muscles he had formed while rowing, and gasped again. Gansey pressed himself down onto him.

“Jesus, Ronan,” Gansey said with reverence. “You feel so good.” Ronan came. Gansey kept rubbing them together until he did too.

-

“I think I was meant to meet you,” Gansey said. They had danced. Ronan wasn’t the type to dance but knew how to waltz. Gansey was the type to want to dance but had never been taught how. Ronan had shown him the steps and Gansey had not really learned but Ronan was happy to pretend he had.

“Oh, really,” said Ronan, coy, throwing hay from the ground at Gansey’s head. Gansey batted it away with a grin.

“It feels right. Like something is starting,” Gansey said, settling next to where Ronan had laid down on the ground. He picked a piece of grass out of Ronan’s curls and then seemed to realize he was doing it, sheepish. Ronan only watched him with satisfaction. Richard Gansey III. He was all his, for now. He was there with Ronan in Ronan’s barn on Ronan’s land. He was here with all of Ronan’s dreams. The summer was endless. Gansey was endless, wasn’t he.

Ronan laughed at nothing, head tilted back. Gansey, jarred, beamed as he watched him do it.

-

_Forever_ , thought Ronan when they woke up the next morning and nothing had really changed. They were still Lynch and Gansey. They went to school. Everything was golden. Fall was on its way. Ronan practiced tennis, Gansey practiced being a king.

 _Forever_ , thought Ronan when he met Blue Sargent, when he met Adam Parrish, when Noah moved in. It was not the same anymore, but it was still infinite, somehow. He sometimes found that he was jealous but there was nothing to do about it, really.

 _Forever_ , he thought when he watched Gansey die. Gansey wasn’t supposed to die. Gansey went on and on and on and on and

He took Cabeswater apart to bring him back. And then it was forever. All of them. The both of them.

“Lynch,” Gansey would say in greeting, an old joke, and _oh,_ _look at that_ , the trees would hum, _it’s summer again_.


End file.
